We’re back from our little vacation. It’s so hard to get back into the swing of things. The plan was to come back with enough time to ease back into work mode but it is not easy. Sleep routines are turned upside down and I’m just generally not ready to not be in vacation mode anymore. I need another week of hanging around the house at least. We had a lot of fun. Beach, pool, hot tub repeat. Some of us more than others. I won’t bore you with the details of our fun in the sun but maybe you’re up for a little schadenfreude.

Let’s see, what happened. Actually, it wasn’t that bad not until Thursday anyway. Let’s see, we worked really hard on a homemade kite following some instructions in an old book I found. It looked great but it didn’t fly. Not even a little. Maybe that’s because shortly after I took this picture I put my thumb through it. Subsequent attempts at launching it only cause more tearing. I attempted field repairs but, uh, not so much. I ran. I ran in the burning hot sand. I REALLY wanted it to fly. Next year.

Speaking of burning hot sand. There was that time that Me and Chase had to stand on the canvas bag I was carrying while I tried to figure out what I was going to do about the third degree burns that we were sure to get on our feet. I mean honestly. If I had any inkling that sand could be that hot I would never attempted to go shoeless. When we finally got to the beach and our feet weren’t charred the wind blew my umbrella inside out while I tried to set it up. Everyone else had their umbrella’s up. They were barely even blowing in the wind but mine was turned inside out. I wanted to hurl it into the ocean. That was awesome.

We left at 5:30 that afternoon sometime around 11:30 Avery stopped crying. Madness. Every other time that she’s tired she gets in the car and crashes. Except, that is, when we have hours of travel ahead of us. We stopped way more than we would have liked to. On one of those stops I took Chase into the gas station to use the bathroom. I asked the attendant if there was a bathroom. So he tells me that it’s outside. I ask if it’s out back where the six cats are lying around a shed and he laughs and tells me that it’s on the back of building. Listen buddy, if there are 6 cats hanging around the shed out back of your Nowhere, VA gas station I don’t think that bathroom in the shed is outside the realm of possibility. So, you just keep your pity for my citified ways to yourself ok? Ok.

Alright, just a few words about the fun parts. We hit a couple of National Sea Shore sites. Those Park Rangers are pretty awesome. Chase learned all kids of stuff about pirates and lighthouses and they were infinitely patient even when she was being incredibly grumpy. She got her Junior Ranger Pin and her National Sea Shore Ranger badge. She’s pretty happy about that. Anyway, time to deal with my email inbox. Boo.

Yay for Avery at the Ocracoke Light! (I’ll have to share my pictures through the decades of me and then my kids standing on that very spot!) And yay for Chase and her Ranger badge! Oh, and a story for another day: A parallel tale of snobbery over country toilets – this one involving small-town Vermont at like 9:00 pm, when apparently everyone has gone home and there is no reason for a public restroom to exist. If it ever stops being an oven out there, maybe we’ll share these stories over the fence or porch rail and not via the web…